Calamity Class Worms were bad news. But this one? This one was an apocalypse with legs.
The air hissed. Steam spewed out like the forge itself was screaming. And then it rose—a grotesque, hulking Worm, all serrated armor and hydraulic limbs—Knuckle Crusher. It looked like someone fed a freight train a lifetime of steroids and told it to hate everything.
With a single leg stomp, it shattered the earth. The impact cracked buildings, sent iron beams flying like twigs, and ruptured pipelines. A molten wave of steam exploded outward. The forge—the only home Buck and Orion ever knew—was obliterated in seconds.
Buck froze. Not out of courage. No. He froze like a deer in front of a flamethrower.
Orion yanked him by the collar, dragging him through the smoke, ash, and chaos like he'd done this before. And maybe he had.
"If ya don't wanna die, run, dumbass!" Orion barked, kicking open a collapsing door with a boot that had seen better centuries.
They crashed through the debris and into an underground chamber—a hidden bunker beneath Orion's junkyard lair. Buck coughed, soot smearing his cheeks, eyes wide with terror.
"What... what the hell is happening?!" he gasped.
But Orion wasn't listening.
He was already at the back of the bunker, his eyes glinting with something between obsession and madness. There, among half-melted scrap and rusted tools, stood it—his creation. A hybrid Worm. Unlike any the world had seen. A monstrous fusion of raw firepower, ancient tech, and his own unhinged genius.
The skeletal frame gleamed with scorched alloy. Jagged shoulder plating. Reinforced Bastion shielding along the chest. And tucked under its spine—a Carnage-class weapon system just itching to burn something.
But it wasn't moving. Not yet.
"Where the hell's that Booster you found, Buck?" Orion yelled.
"I—uh—here—!"
Orion didn't wait. He vaulted over the bench, grabbed the Booster, slammed it into a socket with a spark-spitting clank, and growled, "You better not fry on me now, ya piece of beautiful bastard trash."
"Wh-What is this thing?" Buck stammered. "It looks like it eats nightmares for breakfast."
"It's my fuckin' magnum opus. I call it... well, actually, I didn't name it yet. Been waitin' for it to wake up."
The Worm's core thrummed. Energy lines flickered to life like veins glowing under skin. But it wasn't alive. Not fully.
It needed a SYNC.
SYNC: the sacred, violent ritual of linking a human soul with a Worm's core. It wasn't just plugging wires or flipping switches. No. It required something... more.
An emotion.
A condition.
A memory.
"Stay back," Orion muttered. His voice dropped. For once, he wasn't cursing. He stood in front of the dormant Worm, placed a gloved hand on the core, and closed his eyes.
The first try: Rejection. Sparks flew. His mind was hurled out like a drunk from a bar.
The second: More pain. The Worm screamed in static, his memories splintering with it.
Third: His hands shook. His knees buckled. But he kept going.
Fourth: Blood dripped from his nose. He coughed, spitting onto the floor. Buck reached forward, terrified. "Stop! You're gonna die!"
But Orion grinned.
"Shut up, Buck... This bastard's mine."
Then came the fifth.
And this time... it worked.
Condition confirmed: Bond of the Forge.
Orion's memories—years of hammering metal, of lonely nights spent welding junk with a lantern and a dream—merged with the fragments of machinery, the pain of forgotten weapons, the heat of battles never fought.
The bond was forged in heat, sweat, and fury.
The Worm's eyes lit up. A deep rumble echoed as it rose, joint by joint, as if shaking off centuries of rust.
Its voice, raspy and low, cut through the haze.
"Gear it up, shitty master..."
Orion laughed. A loud, deranged laugh that made Buck question if his friend had finally snapped.
"You son of a bitch, you talk?! That's it. I'm namin' you Bastard. 'Cause that's what you are. My bastard, made from everything this world threw away."
The Worm—now Bastard—growled in response. A good growl. A mechanical growl. The kind of growl that said, Let's fuck shit up.
They didn't wait.
The bunker ceiling burst apart as Bastard launched, the floor cracking under its thrusters. They tore through the forge's ruined rooftop in a fiery blaze of glory, soaring into the open sky.
Buck clung to a handle inside the cockpit, pale as a corpse.
And then... he saw it.
The sky.
Clear, endless, blue.
Not the choking gray of the forge. Not the metallic dust clouds.
Just... blue.
And for the first time, Buck felt freedom. Not as an idea, but as something real.
Orion, meanwhile, was having the time of his life.
"Holy shit!! I did it! I actually SYNC'd with the ugliest piece of scrap in existence! I'm a fuckin' genius!"
"You're insane!" Buck screamed as they veered past collapsing towers.
"Insanely awesome, dipshit!"
Down below, Knuckle Crusher was laying waste to everything. Its arms rotated like mechanical jackhammers, smashing through the remnants of the forge like a toddler with a rage problem.
It was bittersweet. Watching their home burn.
But above it all, Bastard hovered—battered, unstable, magnificent.
Orion slapped Buck hard on the back.
"The fuck are ya sulkin' for, huh? We broke the goddamn chains that kept us on the dirt! I've got a goal, Buck. I'm chasin' the sun, baby!"
Buck blinked, eyes glassy. "How… How can you be so positive? Everything's falling apart."
Orion didn't even look at him.
"Cause I've got a dream." He smirked, teeth bared against the wind. "I'm chasing the sun, baby!"
It hit Buck like a punch to the chest. Orion wasn't just insane.
He was free.
They weren't just escaping the forge. They were breaking the fucking system.
Then—
WHOOOOOOOOOOM.
The sky trembled. Their ascent halted.
Knuckle Crusher's newly revved up reactor released a powerful Electromagnetic Shockwave. A pulse of energy radiated from the beast, splitting the clouds. Static sparked across Bastard's frame.
"Oh f—" Orion managed, before it hit them.
Roll the credits..